A Book of Remarkable CriminalsThe same day there arrived in the prison one who in his own trade had something of the personality and a.s.surance of the culprit he was to execute. William Marwood--unlike his celebrated victim, he has his place in the Dictionary of National Biography--is perhaps the most remarkable of these persons who have held at different times the office of public executioner. As the inventor of the "long drop," he has done a lasting service to humanity by enabling the death-sentence pa.s.sed by the judge to be carried out with the minimum of possible suffering. Marwood took a lofty view of the office he held, and refused his a.s.sent to the somewhat hypocritical loathing, with which those who sanction and profit by his exertions are pleased to regard this servant of the law. "I am doing G.o.d's work," said Marwood, "according to the divine command and the law of the British Crown. I do it simply as a matter of duty and as a Christian. I sleep as soundly as a child and am never disturbed by phantoms. Where there is guilt there is bad sleeping, but I am conscious that I try to live a blameless life. Detesting idleness, I pa.s.s my vacant time in business (he was a shoemaker at Horncastle, in Lincolnshire) and work in my shoeshop near the church day after day until such time as I am required elsewhere. It would have been better for those I executed if they had preferred industry to idleness."
Marwood had not the almost patriarchal air of benevolent respectability which his predecessor Calcraft had acquired during a short experience as a family butler; but as an executioner that kindly old gentleman had been a sad bungler in his time compared with the scientific and expeditious Marwood. The Horncastle shoemaker was saving, businesslike, pious and thoughtful. Like Peace, he had interests outside his ordinary profession. He had at one time propounded a scheme for the abolition of the National Debt, a man clearly determined to benefit his fellowmen in some way or other. A predilection for gin would seem to have been his only concession to the ordinary weakness of humanity. And now he had arrived in Armley Jail to exercise his happy dispatch on the greatest of the many criminals who pa.s.sed through his hands, one who, in his own words, "met death with greater firmness" than any man on whom he had officiated during seven years of Crown employment.
The day of February the 25th broke bitterly cold. Like Charles I.
before him, Peace feared lest the extreme cold should make him appear to tremble on the scaffold. He had slept calmly till six o'clock in the morning. A great part of the two hours before the coming of the hangman Peace spent in letter-writing. He wrote two letters to his wife, in one of which he copied out some verses he had written in Woking Prison on the death of their little boy John. In the second he expressed his satisfaction that he was to die now and not linger twenty years in prison. To his daughter, step-son and son-in-law he wrote letters of fervent, religious exhortation and sent them tracts and pictures which he had secured from well-intentioned persons anxious about his salvation. To an old friend, George Goodlad, a pianist, who had apparently lived up to his name, he wrote: "You chose an honest industrious way through life, but I chose the one of dishonesty, villainy and sin"; let his fate, he said, be a warning.
Peace ate a hearty breakfast and awaited the coming of the executioner with calm. He had been troubled with an inconvenient cough the night before. "I wonder," he said to one of his warders, "if Marwood could cure this cough of mine." He had got an idea into his head that Marwood would "punish" him when he came to deal with him on the scaffold, and asked to see the hangman a few minutes before the appointed hour. "I hope you will not punish me. I hope you will do your work quickly," he said to Marwood. "You shall not suffer pain from my hand," replied that worthy. "G.o.d bless you," exclaimed Peace, "I hope to meet you all in heaven. I am thankful to say my sins are all forgiven." And so these two pious men--on the morning of an execution Marwood always knelt down and asked G.o.d's blessing on the work he had to do--shook hands together and set about their business. Firmly and fearlessly Peace submitted himself to the necessary preparations. For one moment he faltered as the gallows came in sight, but recovered himself quickly.
As Marwood was about to cover his face, Peace stopped him with some irritation of manner and said that he wished to speak to the gentlemen of the press who had been admitted to the ceremony. No one gainsaid him, and he thus addressed the reporters: "You gentlemen reporters, I wish you to notice the few words I am going to say. You know what my life has been. It has been base; but I wish you to notice, for the sake of others, how a man can die, as I am about to die, in fear of the Lord.
Gentlemen, my heart says that I feel a.s.sured that my sins are forgiven me, that I am going to the Kingdom of Heaven, or else to the place prepared for those who rest until the great Judgment day. I do not think I have any enemies, but if there are any who would be so, I wish them well. Gentlemen, all and all, I wish them to come to the Kingdom of Heaven when they die, as I am going to die." He asked a blessing on the officials of the prison and, in conclusion, sent his last wishes and respects to his dear children and their mother. "I hope," he said, "no one will disgrace them by taunting them or jeering them on my account, but to have mercy upon them. G.o.d bless you, my dear children. Good-bye, and Heaven bless you. Amen: Oh, my Lord G.o.d, have mercy upon me!"
After the cap had been placed over his head Peace asked twice very sharply, as a man who expected to be obeyed, for a drink of water. But this time his request was not compiled with. He died instantaneously and was buried in Armley Jail.
Had Peace flourished in 1914 instead of 1874, his end might have been honourable instead of dishonourable. The war of to-day has no doubt saved many a man from a criminal career by turning to worthy account qualities which, dangerous in crime, are useful in war. Absolute fearlessness, agility, resource, cunning and determination; all these are admirable qualities in the soldier; and all these Charles Peace possessed in a signal degree. But fate denied him opportunity, he became a burglar and died on the scaffold. Years of prison life failed, as they did in those days, to make any impression for good on one resolute in whatever way he chose to go. Peace was a born fighter. A detective who knew him and had on one occasion come near capturing him in London, said that he was a fair fighter, that he always gave fair warning to those on whom he fired, and that, being a dead shot, the many wide shots which he fired are to be reckoned proofs of this. Peace maintained to the last that he had never intended to kill Dyson. This statement ex-detective Parrock believed, and that the fatal shot was fired over Peace's shoulder as he was making off. Though habitually sober, Peace was made intoxicated now and then by the drink, stood him by those whom he used to amuse with his musical tricks and antics in public-houses. At such times he would get fuddled and quarrelsome. He was in such a frame of mind on the evening of Dyson's murder. His visit to the Vicar of Ecclesall brought him little comfort or consolation. It was in this unsatisfactory frame of mind that he went to Dyson's house. This much the ex-detective would urge in his favour. To his neighbours he was an awe-inspiring but kind and sympathetic man. "If you want my true opinion of him," says Detective Parrock, "he was a burglar to the backbone but not a murderer at heart. He deserved the fate that came to him as little as any who in modern times have met with a like one." Those who are in the fighting line are always the most generous about their adversaries.
Parrock as a potential target for Peace's revolver, may have erred on the side of generosity, but there is some truth in what he says.
As Peace himself admitted, his life had been base. He was well aware that he had misused such gifts as nature had bestowed on him. One must go back to mediaeval times to find the counterpart of this daring ruffian who, believing in personal G.o.d and devil, refuses until the end to allow either to interfere with his business in life. In this respect Charles Peace reminds us irresistibly of our Angevin kings.
There is only one criminal who vies with Charley Peace in that genial popular regard which makes Charles "Charley" and John "Jack," and that is Jack Sheppard. What Jack was to the eighteenth century, that Charley was to the nineteenth. And each one is in a sense typical of his period.
Lecky has said that the eighteenth century is richer than any other in the romance of crime. I think it may fairly be said that in the nineteenth century the romance of crime ceased to be. In the eighteenth century the scenery and dresses, all the stage setting of crime make for romance; its literature is quaint and picturesque; there is something gay and debonair about the whole business.
Sheppard is typical of all this. There is a certain charm about the rascal; his humour is undeniable; he is a philosopher, taking all that comes with easy grace, even his betrayal by his brother and others who should have been loyal to him. Jack Sheppard has the good-humoured carelessness of that most engaging of all eighteenth century malefactors, Deacon Brodie. It is quite otherwise with Charley Peace.
There is little enough gay or debonair about him. Compared with Sheppard, Peace is as drab as the surroundings of mid-Victorian crime are drab compared with the picturesqueness of eighteenth century England.
Crime in the nineteenth century becomes more scientific in its methods and in its detection also. The revolver places a more hasty, less decorous weapon than the old-fashioned pistol in the hands of the determined burglar. The literature of crime, such as it is, becomes vulgar and prosaic. Peace has no charm about him, no gaiety, but he has the virtues of his defects. He, unlike Sheppard, shuns company; he works alone, never depending on accomplices; a "tight c.o.c.k," as Sheppard would have phrased it, and not relying on a like quality of tightness in his fellows. Sheppard is a slave to his women, Edgeworth Bess and Mrs.
Maggot; Mrs. Peace and Sue Thompson are the slaves of Peace. Sheppard loves to stroll openly about the London streets in his fine suit of black, his ruffled shirt and his silver-hilted sword. Peace lies concealed at Peckham beneath the homely disguise of old Mr. Thompson.
Sheppard is an imp, Peace a goblin. But both have that gift of personality which, in their own peculiar line, lifts them out from the ruck, and makes them Jack and Charley to those who like to know famous people by cheery nicknames.
And so we must accept Charles Peace as a remarkable character, whose unquestioned gifts as a man of action were squandered on a criminal career; neither better nor worse than a great number of other persons, whose good fortune it has been to develop similar qualities under happier surroundings. There are many more complete villains than the ordinary criminal, who contrive to go through life without offending against the law. Close and scientific investigation has shown that the average convicted criminal differs intellectually from the normal person only in a slightly lower level of intelligence, a condition that may well be explained by the fact that the convicted criminal has been found out. Crime has been happily defined by a recent and most able investigator into the character of the criminal(12) as "an unusual act committed by a perfectly normal person." At the same time, according to the same authority, there is a type of normal person who tends to be convicted of crime, and he is differentiated from his fellows by defective physique and mental capacity and an increased possession of antisocial qualities.(13)
(12) "The English Convict," a statistical study, by Charles Goring, M.D.
His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1913.
(13) Murderers--at least those executed for their crimes--have not for obvious reasons been made the subject of close scientific observation.
Their mental capacity would in all probability be found to be rather higher than that of less ambitious criminals.
How does Peace answer to the definition? Though short in stature, his physical development left little to be desired: he was active, agile, and enjoyed excellent health at all times. For a man of forty-seven he had aged remarkably in appearance. That is probably to be accounted for by mental worry. With two murders on his conscience we know from Sue Thompson that all she learnt of his secrets was what escaped from him in his troubled dreams--Peace may well have shown traces of mental anxiety. But in all other respects Charles Peace would seem to have been physically fit. In intellectual capacity he was undoubtedly above the average of the ordinary criminal. The facts of his career, his natural gifts, speak for themselves. Of anti-social proclivities he no doubt possessed his share at the beginning, and these were aggravated, as in most cases they were in his day, by prison life and discipline.
Judged as scientifically as is possible where the human being is concerned, Peace stands out physically and intellectually well above the average of his cla.s.s, perhaps the most naturally gifted of all those who, without advantages of rank or education, have tried their hands at crime. Ordinary crime for the most part would appear to be little better than the last resort of the intellectually defective, and a poor game at that. The only interesting criminals are those worthy of something better. Peace was one of these. If his life may be said to point a moral, it is the very simple one that crime is no career for a man of brains.
The Career of Robert Butler
There is a report of Butler's trial published in Dunedin. It gives in full the speeches and the cross-examination of the witnesses, but not in all cases the evidence-in-chief. By the kindness of a friend in New Zealand I obtained a copy of the depositions taken before the magistrate; with this I have been able to supplement the report of the trial. A collection of newspaper cuttings furnished me with the details of the rest of Butler's career.
I
THE DUNEDIN MURDERS
On the evening of March 23, 1905, Mr. William Munday, a highly respected citizen of the town of Tooringa, in Queensland, was walking to the neighbouring town of Toowong to attend a masonic gathering. It was about eight o'clock, the moon shining brightly. Nearing Toowong, Mr. Munday saw a middle-aged man, bearded and wearing a white overcoat, step out into the moonlight from under the shadow of a tree. As Mr. Munday advanced, the man in the white coat stood directly in his way. "Out with all you have, and quick about it," he said. Instead of complying with this peremptory summons, Mr. Munday attempted to close with him. The man drew back quickly, whipped out a revolver, fired, and made off as fast as he could. The bullet, after pa.s.sing through Mr. Munday's left arm, had lodged in the stomach. The unfortunate gentleman was taken to a neighbouring hospital where, within a few hours, he was dead.
In the meantime a vigorous search was made for his a.s.sailant. Late the same night Constable Hennessy, riding a bicycle, saw a man in a white coat who seemed to answer to the description of the a.s.sa.s.sin. He dismounted, walked up to him and asked him for a match. The man put his hand inside his coat. "What have you got there?" asked the constable.
"I'll--soon show you," replied the man in the white coat, producing suddenly a large revolver. But Hennessy was too quick for him. Landing him one under the jaw, he sent him to the ground and, after a sharp struggle, secured him. Constable Hennessy little knew at the time that his capture in Queensland of the man in the white coat was almost as notable in the annals of crime as the affray at Blackheath on an autumn night in 1878, when Constable Robinson grappled successfully, wounded as he was, with Charles Peace.
The man taken by Hennessy gave the name of James Wharton, and as James Wharton he was hanged at Brisbane. But before his death it was ascertained beyond doubt, though he never admitted it himself, that Wharton was none other than one Robert Butler, whose career as a criminal and natural wickedness may well rank him with Charles Peace in the hierarchy of scoundrels. Like Peace, Butler was, in the jargon of crime, a "hatter," a "lone hand," a solitary who conceived and executed his nefarious designs alone; like Peace, he supplemented an insignificant physique by a liberal employment of the revolver; like Peace, he was something of a musician, the day before his execution he played hymns for half an hour on the prison organ; like Peace, he knew when to whine when it suited his purpose; and like Peace, though not with the same intensity, he could be an uncomfortably persistent lover, when the fit was on him. Both men were cynics in their way and viewed their fellow-men with a measure of contempt. But here parallel ends.
Butler was an intellectual, inferior as a craftsman to Peace, the essentially practical, unread, naturally gifted artist. Butler was a man of books. He had been schoolmaster, journalist. He had studied the lives of great men, and as a criminal, had devoted especial attention to those of Frederick the Great and Napoleon. Butler's defence in the Dunedin murder trial was a feat of skill quite beyond the power of Peace. Peace was a religious man after the fashion of the mediaeval tyrant, Butler an infidel. Peace, dragged into the light of a court of justice, cut a sorry figure; here Butler shone. Peace escaped a conviction for murder by letting another suffer in his place; Butler escaped a similar experience by the sheer ingenuity of his defence. Peace had the modesty and reticence of the sincere artist; Butler the loquacious vanity of the literary or forensic c.o.xcomb. Lastly, and it is the supreme difference, Butler was a murderer by instinct and conviction, as Lacenaire or Ruloff; "a man's life," he said, "was of no more importance than a dog's; nature respects the one no more than the other, a volcanic eruption kills mice and men with the one hand. The divine command, 'kill, kill and spare not,' was intended not only for Joshua, but for men of all time; it is the example of our rulers, our Fredericks and Napoleons."
Butler was of the true Prussian mould. "In crime," he would say, "as in war, no half measures. Let us follow the example of our rulers whose orders in war run, 'Kill, burn and sink,' and what you cannot carry away, destroy.'" Here is the gospel of frightfulness applied almost prophetically to crime. To Butler murder is a principle of warfare; to Peace it was never more than a desperate resort or an act the outcome of ungovernable pa.s.sion.
Ireland can claim the honour of Butler's birth. It took place at Kilkenny about 1845. At an early age he left his native land for Australia, and commenced his professional career by being sentenced under the name of James Wilson--the same initials as those of James Wharton of Queensland--to twelve months' imprisonment for vagrancy. Of the sixteen years he pa.s.sed in Victoria he spent thirteen in prison, first for stealing, then in steady progression for highway robbery and burglary. Side by side with the practical and efficient education in crime furnished by the Victorian prisons of that day, Butler availed himself of the opportunity to educate his mind. It was during this period that he found inspiration and encouragement in the study of the lives of Frederick and Napoleon, besides acquiring a knowledge of music and shorthand.
When in 1876 Butler quitted Australia for New Zealand, he was sufficiently accomplished to obtain employment as a schoolmaster.
At Cromwell, Otago, under the name of "C. J. Donelly, Esq.," Butler opened a "Commercial and Preparatory Academy," and in a prospectus that recalls Mr. Squeers' famous advertis.e.m.e.nt of Dotheboys Hall, announced that the programme of the Academy would include "reading, taught as an art and upon the most approved principles of elocution, writing, arithmetic, euclid, algebra, mensuration, trigonometry, book-keeping, geography, grammar, spelling and dictation, composition, logic and debate, French, Latin, shorthand, history, music, and general lectures on astronomy, natural philosophy, geology, and other subjects." The simpler principles of these branches of learning were to be "rendered intelligible, and a firm foundation laid for the acquirement of future knowledge." Unfortunately a suspicion of theft on Butler's part cut short the fulfilment of this really splendid programme, and Butler left Cromwell hurriedly for the ampler field of Dunedin. There, less than a fortnight after his arrivel{sic}, he was sentenced to four years' hard labour for several burglaries committed in and about that city.
On the 18th of February, 1880, Butler was released from prison. With that consummate hypocrisy which was part of the man, he had contrived to enlist the sympathies of the Governor of the Dunedin Jail, who gave him, on his departure, a suit of clothes and a small sum of money.
A detective of the name of Bain tried to find him employment. Butler wished to adopt a literary career. He acted as a reporter on the Dunedin Evening Star, and gave satisfaction to the editor of that newspaper. An attempt to do some original work, in the shape of "Prison Sketches,"
for another newspaper, was less successful. Bain had arranged for the publication of the articles in the Sunday Advertiser, but when the time came to deliver his ma.n.u.script, Butler failed to appear. Bain, whose duty it was to keep an eye on Butler, found him in the street looking wild and haggard. He said that he had found the work "too much for his head," that he had torn up what he had written, that he had nowhere to go, and had been to the end of the jetty with the intention of drowning himself. Bain replied somewhat caustically that he thought it a pity he had not done so, as nothing would have given him greater joy than going to the end of the jetty and identifying his body. "You speak very plainly," said Butler. "Yes, and what is more, I mean what I say,"
replied Bain. Butler justified Bain's candour by saying that if he broke out again, he would be worse than the most savage tiger ever let loose on the community. As a means of obviating such an outbreak, Butler suggested that, intellectual employment having failed, some form of manual labour should be found him. Bain complied with Butler's request, and got him a job at levelling reclaimed ground in the neighbourhood of Dunedin. On Wednesday, March 10, Butler started work, but after three hours of it relinquished the effort. Bain saw Butler again in Dunedin on the evening of Sat.u.r.day, March 13, and made an appointment to meet him at half-past eight that night. Butler did not keep the appointment. Bain searched the town for him, but he was nowhere to be found.
About the same time Butler had some talk with another member of the Dunedin police force, Inspector Mallard. They discussed the crimes of Charles Peace and other notable artists of that kind. Butler remarked to Mallard how easy it would be to destroy all traces of a murder by fire, and asked the inspector whether if he woke up one morning to find some brutal murder had been committed, he would not put it down to him. "No, Butler," replied the inspector, "the first thing I should do would be to look for suspicious circ.u.mstances, and most undoubtedly, if they pointed to you, you would be looked after."
In the early morning of this Sat.u.r.day, March 13, the house of a Mr.
Stamper, a solicitor of Dunedin, had been broken into, and some articles of value, among them a pair of opera gla.s.ses, stolen. The house had been set on fire, and burned to the ground. On the morning of the following day, Sunday, the 14th, Dunedin was horrified by the discovery of a far more terrible crime, tigerish certainly in its apparent ferocity. In a house in c.u.mberland Street, a young married couple and their little baby were cruelly murdered and un{sic}{an??} unsuccessful attempt made to fire the scene of the crime.
About half-past six on Sunday morning a man of the name of Robb, a carpenter, on getting out of bed, noticed smoke coming from the house of a neighbor of his, Mr. J. M. Dewar, who occupied a small one-floored cottage standing by itself in c.u.mberland Street, a large and broad thoroughfare on the outskirts of the town. Dewar was a butcher by trade, a young man, some eighteen months married, and father of a baby girl.
Robb, on seeing smoke coming from Dewar's house, woke his son, who was a member of the fire brigade. The latter got up, crossed the street, and going round to the back door, which he found wide open, entered the house. As he went along the pa.s.sage that separated the two front rooms, a bedroom and sitting-room, he called to the inmates to get up. He received no answer, but as he neared the bedroom he heard a "gurgling"
sound. Crawling on his hands and knees he reached the bedroom door, and two feet inside it his right hand touched something. It was the body of a woman; she was still alive, but in a dying condition. Robb dragged her across the pa.s.sage into the sitting-room. He got some water, and extinguished the fire in the bedroom. On the bed lay the body of Dewar.
To all appearances he had been killed in his sleep. By his side was the body of the baby, suffocated by the smoke. Near the bed was an axe belonging to Dewar, stained with blood. It was with this weapon, apparently, that Mr. and Mrs. Dewar had been attacked. Under the bed was a candlestick belonging also to the Dewars, which had been used by the murderer in setting fire to the bed. The front window of the sitting-room was open, there were marks of boot nails on the sill, and on the gra.s.s in front of the window a knife was found. An attempt had been made to ransack a chest of drawers in the bedroom, but some articles of jewellery lying in one of the drawers, and a ring on the dressing-table had been left untouched. As far as was known, Mr. and Mrs. Dewar were a perfectly happy and united couple. Dewar had been last seen alive about ten o'clock on the Sat.u.r.day night getting off a car near his home. At eleven a neighbour had noticed a light in the Dewars'
house. About five o'clock on the Sunday morning another neighbour had been aroused from his sleep by the sound as of something falling heavily. It was a wild and boisterous night. Thinking the noise might be the slamming of his stable door, he got up and went out to see that it was secure. He then noticed that a light was burning in the bedroom window of the Dewars' cottage.
Nothing more was known of what had occurred that morning until at half-past six Robb saw the smoke coming from Dewars' house. Mrs. Dewar, who alone could have told something, never recovered consciousness and died on the day following the crime. Three considerable wounds sufficient to cause death had been inflicted on the unfortunate woman's head, and five of a similar character on that of her husband. At the head of the bed, which stood in the corner of the room, there was a large smear of blood on the wall just above the door; there were spots of blood all over the top of the bed, and some smaller ones that had to all appearances spurted on to the panel of the door nearest to the bed.
The investigation of this shocking crime was placed in the hands of Detective Bain, whose duty it had been to keep an eye on Robert Butler, but he did not at first a.s.sociate his interesting charge with the commission of the murder. About half-past six on Sunday evening Bain happened to go to a place called the Scotia Hotel, where the landlord informed him that one of his servants, a girl named Sarah Gillespie, was very anxious to see him. Her story was this: On the morning of Thursday, March 11, Robert Butler had come to the hotel; he was wearing a dark lavender check suit and carried a top coat and parcel. Butler had stayed in the hotel all Thursday and slept there that night. He had not slept in the hotel on the Friday night, and Sarah Gillespie had not seen him again until he came into the house about five and twenty minutes to seven on Sunday morning. The girl noticed that he was pale and excited, seemed afraid and worried, as if someone were coming after him. After giving her some money for the landlord, he went upstairs, fetched his top coat, a m.u.f.fler, and his parcel. Before leaving he said he would have a pint of beer, as he had not breakfasted. He then left, presumably to catch an early train.
Butler was next seen a few minutes later at a shop near the hotel, where he bought five tins of salmon, and about the same time a milk-boy saw him standing on the kerb in c.u.mberland Street in a stooping position, his head turned in the direction of Dewars' house. A little after ten the same night Butler entered a hotel at a place called Blueskin, some twelve miles distant from Dunedin. He was wearing an overcoat and a light m.u.f.fler. He sat down at a table in the dining-room and seemed weary and sleepy. Someone standing at the bar said "What a shocking murder that was in c.u.mberland Street!" Butler started up, looked steadily from one to the other of the two men who happened to be in the room, then sat down again and, taking up a book, appeared to be reading.
More than once he put down the book and kept shifting uneasily in his chair. After having some supper he got up, paid his reckoning, and left the hotel.
At half-past three the following morning, about fifteen miles from Dunedin, on the road to Waikouaiti, two constables met a man whom they recognised as Butler from a description that had been circulated by the police. The constables arrested and searched him. They found on him a pair of opera gla.s.ses, the property of Mr. Stamper, whose house had been burgled and burned down on the morning of the 13th. Of this crime Butler acknowledged himself to be the perpetrator. Besides the opera gla.s.ses the constables took from Butler two tins of salmon, a purse containing four shillings and sixpence, a pocket knife, a box of matches, a piece of candle, and a revolver and cartridges. The prisoner was carrying a top coat, and was dressed in a dark coat and grey trousers, underneath which he was wearing a white shirt, an under flannel and a Rob Roy Crimean shirt. One of the constables noticed that there were marks of blood on his shirt. Another singular feature in Butler's attire was the fact that the outer soles of his boots had been recently removed. When last seen in Dunedin Butler had been wearing a moustache; he was now clean shaven.
The same evening a remarkable interview took place in the lock-up at Waikouaiti between Butler and Inspector Mallard. Mallard, who had some reason for suspecting Butler, bearing in mind their recent conversation, told the prisoner that he would be charged with the murder in c.u.mberland Street. For a few seconds, according to Mallard, the prisoner seemed terribly agitated and appeared to be choking. Recovering himself somewhat, he said, "If for that, you can get no evidence against me; and if I am hanged for it, I shall be an innocent man, whatever other crimes I may have committed." Mallard replied, "There is evidence to convict you--the fire was put out." Butler than{sic} said that he would ask Mallard a question, but, after a pause, decided not to do so. Mallard, after examining Butler's clothes, told him that those were not the clothes in which he had left the Scotia Hotel. Butler admitted it, and said he had thrown those away in the North East Valley. Mallard alluded to the disappearance of the prisoner's moustache. Butler replied that he had cut it off on the road. Mallard noticed then the backs of Butler's hands were scratched, as if by contact with bushes. Butler seemed often on the point of asking questions, but would then stop and say "No, I won't ask you anything." To the constables who had arrested him Butler remarked, "You ought to remember me, because I could have shot you if I had wished." When Mallard later in the evening visited Butler again, the prisoner who was then lying down said, "I want to speak to you. I want to ask the press not to publish my career. Give me fair play. I suppose I shall be convicted and you will see I can die like a man."
A few days after Butler's arrest a ranger on the Town Belt, a hill overlooking Dunedin, found a coat, a hat and silk striped cravat, and a few days later a pair of trousers folded up and placed under a bush.